The rain came down in small tear like droplets. My hair clung to my face in damp tendrils as I wandered the dark and empty street. Searching...

Searching for what you might ask. I ask myself that same question each time my body finds it's way here. For that is how it always happens, I don't mean to come here. I never even think about here. Well, almost never, and when I do it comes to me like a vision. Something that is known in it's entirety without having to think the individual thoughts or words. It is that what or why that always seems to elude me. It is there, I know it. I can feel its presence hovering, somewhere just beyond the edge. Lurking or perhaps looking, and there I am, sort of a circle.

Searching - looking, it's the same really. If I could only resign myself to the fact that this was somehow an unsolvable riddle, but I cannot.

Growing weary I look at my watch and discover I have been walking this same stretch of road, from lamppost to lamppost for hours. Then again this really comes as no surprise, it's merely an observation of fact, it's always this way.

Home.....I should go home, take off these wet clothes. Again I am aware of the rain, and that I am cold.....very cold. Had I ever been this cold? Normally it is something I avoid. It frightens me, the way it seems to reach inside me causing my insides to shiver, making me feel very small and defenseless. Hmm, small and defenseless those words don't seem to be enough. If only I were a writer perhaps I could find better ones.

A writer, I had wanted to be one once a long time ago. Just one of the many things I had once wanted to be. Dreams have a way of fading, or maybe it's not the dreams that faded maybe it was me. Like flowers left on the coffee table to long wither and die, there I believe this too my fault. Somewhere along the way I became frightened. I could blame it on the playground bullies, mercilessly teasing the perpetual new kid for the crime of not having the proper shoes for P.E., Or standing alone as they fought over who got stuck with her on their softball team. I could blame it on those girls, the nasty spiteful girls, with their perfect homes and perfect hair. I could blame it on an absentee father or an alcoholic mother. I could blame it on the many hurts both real an imagined, but I won't, for I know that's not it. Many people had a troubled childhood. All I can say for certain is that somewhere along the way I lost something.

Ah.....lost something.....searching for something, another circle.

Home, I'd forgotten I was going home. Then again why, there was nothing really there, and I'd only end up back here again. In a day, or a week, or a month....no, not a month, it never took that long for this place to draw me back.

House after house of dark windows, how many times had I walked past these houses? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, growing to hate the people inside more and more each time; their ability to rest, to sleep, when so much was happening.